Bon Entendeur Return With Their Most Personal Album Yet

When Arnaud Bonet and Pierre Della Monica had their first brush with the music industry over a decade ago, it wasn't as the recording artists they are now. Instead, the French duo got their start as bloggers.

"We launched Bon Entendeur 12 years ago," Bonet says. "At the beginning, it was only a music blog, and the purpose was to share online the music that we loved."

Eventually, writing about music turned into creating mixtapes, which gave them the impetus to produce a song of their own, "Le temps est bon." According to Bonet, the track remains their most popular. From there, their career as musicians began in full force.

"For us, it's really big, and it changed our life," Bonet says. "We signed with a big label in France, actually a worldwide label, which is Sony Columbia."

Bon Entendeur has released three albums, including its latest, 2024's Rivages. The duo is currently touring North America to promote the record, with a show in Miami at ZeyZey on Sunday, February 23.

"We've never played there, but I had the chance to visit Miami 15 years ago," Bonet says. "The city is nice, the coastline is beautiful. I don't know what we can expect. Maybe that we find our public there and that people will enjoy our music."
Rivages draws heavily from Bonet and Della Monica's own experiences and doubles as an exploration of the sounds that initially inspired them. According to Della Monica, the album features original tracks and remixes, and with the ties to the "vintage sonorities from the '70s, '60s" the duo are well-known for remaining.

"It's a more personal album," Della Monica adds. "We wanted to go back to our roots, Mediterranean woods. So, we imagined the album as a trip to the Mediterranean Sea. So it's a musical cruise through the whole Mediterranean, through through the whole culture and country that we loved."

Coming off of a previous leg of the tour that took them all over the world, the duo says they're too focused on traveling to turn their minds to new music. Despite the associated exhaustion, they say they're looking forward to continuing.

"We don't have that much right now because we've toured for months since the release of our last album," Della Monica says. "We are trying to think about the next one. We just had a one-month break, and we're so excited to go back to the U.S. because every time, it's just a blast."

In particular, Della Monica says the duo hopes to find a hospitable audience in Miami.

"Miami is kind of, I mean, musically like Ibiza," Della Monica says. "More electronic music, sometimes EDM or even techno music. So I don't know if we have a crowd over there. I just can't wait to see what people are expecting from us in Miami."

Bon Entendeur. With Aramis and KC Happy. 5 p.m. Sunday, February 23, at ZeyZey, 353 NE 61st St., Miami; zeyzeymiami.com. Tickets cost $36 to $66 via shotgun. Live.